quote:

---

Gerhard Schröder declared 10 years ago, during the Third Way and New Labour honeymoon, that "economic policy is neither left not right. It is either good or bad". Ten years later, we are allowed to conclude that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy. When he made his declaration, 11 out of 15 governments of the then European Union were run by socialists. Now, election after election, country after country, the left is elbowed out from positions of power. In the course of the last decade, social-democratic parties have presided over the economic policy of privatisation of gains and nationalisation of losses. They ran states preoccupied with deregulation, privatisation and individualisation.

At the end of the New Labour decade, Gordon Brown leads the all-European effort to mobilise the taxpayers into the campaign to recapitalise the capitalist economy, saving it from the consequences of its own greed and inbuilt suicidal tendency. There is almost nothing left to distinguish left from right in economic, or any other, policy.

---

And of course, the investment and banking industry were appealing to folks regarding how to look after themselves in their golden years.

All added up to getting aboard and trying to do something for the disposessed and marginalized in the wake of the "Great Greedy Grab".